VR, by itself, as an immersive visual experience that lets you look in all directions is amazing. But when you add motion controllers that mimic your hands and fingers so that you can "touch" and interact with objects in the virtual world, VR becomes even more compelling.

It was my first time trying out the Oculus Touch controllers with the Rift. At E3, Mashable games editor Chelsea Stark got a personal demo with Palmer Luckey, the 23-year-old creator of the Rift, and she was completely blown away. I had a similar experience.

I tried out the same "toybox" demo, but with the final consumer version of the Oculus Rift, inside of a soundproof room at Oculus VR's massive CES booth. With the Rift secured to my head, an Oculus rep slipped the two Touch controllers over my hands, first the left and then the right. Each controller had its own lanyard loop to keep it attached to my wrists to prevent them from flying off. (Good thing, too, because they almost slipped off when I was getting really into the demos.)

Squeeze the triggers to open and close your fingers in the VR world.

Image: Liz Pierson/Mashable

Erin, an Oculus rep in a separate room, walked me through the Touch controllers. They were simple enough to pick up in seconds. Squeeze the middle trigger to make your VR hands ball up into a fist. Lift your thumbs upward and your VR thumbs will do the same. Extend your pointer fingers and your VR pointer fingers will copy. Easy.

The next thing I knew, I was in a room with a table and it was littered with toys — everything from blocks to tank cars to gnomes to a tether ball suspended in the air.

Erin encouraged me to use my new VR hands to pick objects up, stack them and knock them around. I can't stress enough how much more natural using the Touch controllers to pick things up is compared to using an Xbox One controller.

Next, we played with a lighter and lit up sparklers and painted in the air with them. From the clink of the lighter flipping open to the sizzle of the sparklers, it felt so damn real. We fired ray guns at gnomes and ceramic rabbits.

Pulling back on a VR slingshot.

Image: Liz Pierson/Mashable

At one point, Erin threw a boomerang into the air and I had to shoot it. In another demo, Erin held out a slingshot and I pulled back on its rubber band, staring right down its line of sight before releasing it. Then, Erin picked up a shrink ray gun, zapped me with it and I was suddenly bug-sized on the table. As she loomed over me, her voice modulated, I felt like I was in Honey I Shrunk the Kids; for a split second I felt scared and terrified that she could squash me like a cockroach.

My demo was only around 10 to 15 minutes long, but it felt like I was in the VR world for a lot longer. I really didn't want to take off the headset and leave the VR world. If I had it my way, I would have stayed in the toybox world for hours.

I didn't feel nauseous at all wearing the VR headset and I found the final build of the headset to be quite comfortable, even though the nosepiece didn't sit properly on my nose and let a little bit of light in.

I've been somewhat skeptical of the Oculus Rift, mainly because it's launching with mostly "seated" content experiences. That is, the initial flood of content will be ones where you'll be seated and using an Xbox One controller to control what's happening in the VR world.

With Touch, I'm not so skeptical anymore. If you've been following the Rift since its Kickstarter days and have tried it out before, you'll be quite satisfied if you buy the $600 consumer version of the Oculus Rift. You, however, won't get the Oculus Touch controllers with it, and that's really the only part that sucks. The Oculus Rift is infinitely better and more immersive with Oculus Touch, which won't launch until later in the year.

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